Clinton Urges Campaign Against Youth Crime

By ALISON MITCHELL

Published: February 20, 1997

BOSTON, Feb. 19—
Signaling the new emphasis of his anti-crime measures in a second term, President Clinton today visited a city that has seen an impressive reduction in juvenile crime statistics and declared that the battle against youth crime ''has got to become our top law-enforcement priority.''

Pointing to population trends, Mr. Clinton said United States school enrollment had swelled to 52 million and was running above baby boom levels, numbers that he said could hold the potential for a youth crime epidemic.

''So we know we've got about six years to turn this juvenile crime thing around or our country is going to be living with chaos,'' he said in an address at the Boston campus of the University of Massachusetts. ''And my successors will not be giving speeches about the wonderful opportunities of the global economy; they'll be trying to keep body and soul together for people on the streets of these cities.''

Mr. Clinton also urged Congress to approve a $495 million two-year campaign against youth crime. The program would include $200 million in grants to allow localities to hire new prosecutors for juvenile crime and develop task forces to fight gangs, $60 million to finance 1,000 new after-school programs and $75 million for anti-truancy and crime prevention programs.

The President called for expanding controls on handguns so that youths who turn 18 and have juvenile records of violent crime are blocked from buying handguns. Adults who commit felonies are prohibited from possessing firearms, but juvenile records are not scrutinized in such purchases.

And he proposed changes in law to make it easier for prosecutors to fight gangs through increased penalties, new authority to seize property in crimes of violence, racketeering and obstruction of justice and an easing of the burden of proof in certain car-jacking cases and Federal racketeering cases.

Mr. Clinton highlighted his proposals in a city that has had marked success in fighting juvenile violence. From 1990 to 1995 juvenile homicides in Boston fell by 80 percent and no juvenile has been killed by gunfire here since July 1995. From 1993 to 1995, the juvenile arrest rate for aggravated assault and battery with a firearm dropped 65 percent.

Police and public officials attribute the improvement to innovative and inexpensive strategies like one in which probation officers team with police officers to visit the homes of youths on probation to insure that they abide by their curfew and probation terms. Like New York, Boston has also focused on enforcing statutes against graffiti, truancy, noise and other so-called quality-of-life crimes in cutting the crime rate.

City officials also intensified their focus on gangs and guns after computer-aided research from Harvard University found that three-quarters of juvenile killers and their victims had been involved with gangs and that the authorities could identify firearms dealers who made significant numbers of illegal gun sales to young people.

''We know that if this can be done in Boston, ''Mr. Clinton said, ''it can be done in every community, in every neighborhood of every size in the United States. And we ask the United States Congress to do what you've done here in Massachusetts: cross all party lines, throw politics away, throw the speeches in the trash can, join hands. Let's do what works and make America the safe place it has to be.''

Congressional Republicans have proposed a three-year program against youth crime, a $1.5 billion plan that would give grants to state and local governments for applying adult penalties to the most dangerous, violent juveniles. The grants could be used to build or expand juvenile detention centers to develop alternative sanction programs.

But Michael D. McCurry, the White House press secretary, said Boston's experience showed that youth crime could be attacked through community policing and other community-based programs.

''It's not just about building more prisons or toughening law enforcement or providing more cops,'' Mr. McCurry said. ''It's also about a strategy of engagement in the community so that young people understand that adults care about their lives and are holding them accountable to more civil norms of behavior.''

Photo: President Clinton shared a laugh yesterday with Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston at a juvenile crime and justice seminar at the University of Massachusetts after a participant used a metaphor, then hastened to say he was not referring to Mr. Clinton in saying it was easier to lose the first 20 pounds when dieting than the second 20. (Reuters)